Agonizing About Vacation Expenditures

In a couple of hours, I’m going to set an Out of Office message, get on a plane, and spend a week on the JoCo Cruise.

What else am I going to spend?

There’ll be $25 to check my bag to and from FLL.

There’ll be some $8 “snack pack” that will serve as tonight’s airplane dinner.

There will be about $45 in taxis to and from the hotel, airport, and cruiseport.

There will be about $50 in cash tips. Even though Royal Caribbean is all “gratuity is included” on its website, what I’ve found is that cash tips significantly improve service. (A suitcase with a $2 tip will arrive in your stateroom at the last possible moment; a suitcase with a $20 tip will arrive right away. I know this from experience.)

And then there will be the fun expenditures, which I am still trying to justify in my mind.

It is hilarious that I am spending thousands of dollars on this vacation and quibbling with myself about how many $10 cocktails I can afford. Last year I spent around $160 on adult beverages, and I’ll tell you that one of the happiest moments on my trip came when our server visited our dining table with the tray of what I affectionately call “candy shooters” — $8 shooters with names like Almond Joy, and you get to keep the glass — and I told everyone at the table that this round was on me.

I’m also quibbling with myself about whether I’m going to pay $90 to ride, as I put it, “an elmerfudding horse in the elmerfudding ocean.” On the one hand, it is $90 and that sounds ridiculous. On the other hand, you get to ride an elmerfudding horse in the elmerfudding ocean. That’s like all of my horse girl fantasies combined with my ocean girl fantasies! (Ask me how many times I read Island of the Blue Dolphins.)

Or I could pay even more money to climb a volcano, zipline down a zipline, or swim with the dolphins. I am not doing this because I keep telling myself that I am spending plenty of money on this vacation to begin with, that I’d rather buy my friends drinks than see a volcano, that a year from now I will remember how much fun this trip was and won’t remember what I didn’t spend money on.

And then Parks and Rec has to go and air another “treat yo self” episode, and now I’m thinking “But I should treat myself! That’s what Tom and Donna would want me to do! When you treat yourself instead of sitting on the shore watching everyone else ride horses in the ocean, you learn new things, make new connections between ideas, strengthen friendships, plus you get to touch a horse…”

I mean, I should do it for the strengthened neural connections at the very least.

I am literally sitting at my laptop right now, about to go and do a bunch of stressful travel stuff like planes and unfamiliar public transit systems, and I’m feeling like I should do something triumphant like telling all of you I just booked a horse excursion, or that I decided I would spend the entire trip Treating My Self, starting by skipping the terrible $8 snack pack and buying something better.

Except:

During this week’s Billfold LIVE, Anne Helen Petersen told a story about being in grad school and living a very frugal life while simultaneously spending a lot of money on important experiences.

I’ve also learned from practicing David Allen’s Getting Things Done that there are two big reasons why people don’t do things:

1) They’re afraid of not knowing how to do the thing

2) The thing just isn’t that important to them

When you look at it that way, it’s pretty clear that the reason I haven’t given RCI my credit card for the elmerfudding horse excursion is because it isn’t that important to me. Keep in mind that I’ve spent hours picking out the right clothes, altering a vintage princess dress to fit me, practicing my ukulele and writing new songs to sing on the boat. I know what’s important to me because I’ve already done it.

And I know that I’m going to spend at least $90 on something fun, and I’d much rather it be a round of drinks for everyone at the table.

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